Soil and debris from building developments is believed to have been dumped on a 50-acre site near Northwich, Cheshire, which has earned the unwanted title of England’s biggest illegal waste site
A huge 280,000 tonne dump has been revealed as Britain’s biggest illegal waste site.
Soil and debris from building developments is believed to have been dumped on a 50-acre site near Northwich, Cheshire, raising the ground level by two metres. The dump has been linked to increased instances of flooding at nearby farmland and residential properties.
It is one of hundreds of illegal dumps operating across England, including at least 11 so-called “super sites” containing tens of thousands of tonnes of rubbish. More than 700 illegal tips were shut down in 2024/25, but data released by the Environment Agency has revealed some 517 dumps were still active at the end of last year.
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Among the largest sites yet to be cleared up are the one in Cheshire, two 50,000-tonne sites in Lancashire and Cornwall, a 36,000-tonne tip in Kent and a 20,000-tonne dump in Oxfordshire.
Most sites are in countryside locations, often hidden, and on what should be agricultural land. Police say many are run by organised crime gangs, who are making cash by charging much less than legitimate operators to take and bury waste.
Businesses have to pay site fees to use legitimate licensed landfill sites, depending on the amount and type of waste they are trying to get rid of, and landfill tax is also charged at just over £126 per tonne. An Environment Agency spokesman said it was committed to tackling waste crime and was “pulling every lever to disrupt those who profit from the harm illegal waste sites cause”.
Environmental campaigners and residents living near sites across England say little is being done to clean up the dumps, despite the culprits in many cases already having been identified and prosecuted. Many of the tips operating across the country are run by serious organised crime gangs while the scale of illegal waste activity in England saw it once dubbed the “new narcotics” by former Environment Agency chief Sir James Bevan.
The gangs often bring shredding equipment onto rural sites, located off otherwise quiet country lanes, which then see an influx of lorries bringing in waste. This ranges from household rubbish to soil and aggregate from construction sites – to be broken down into smaller, dumpable amounts.
Lorry loads are then taken away, either to be dumped in increasingly larger mountains of waste, buried under farmland or bridleways or even stored in barns. Earlier this month, nearly £100,000 in cash was seized and two men arrested in a series of raids linked to suspected money laundering and waste crimes across Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire.
Officers also seized six guns, suspected fake electrical goods and a suspected stolen vehicle. Insp Dave Wise, of West Mercia Police, said waste crime was “not a problem that can be solved overnight”.
He added that the force was carrying out complex investigations into organised crime gangs, with links to money laundering and other financial crimes, and into the individuals who were “profiting from pollution of the environment”. Concerns over the scale of illegal waste activity hit the headlines at the end of last year when around 20,000 tonnes of waste was dumped illegally on a field beside the A34 at Kidlington in Oxfordshire over a period of several months.
Emma Viner, the Environment Agency’s enforcement and investigations manager, said: “We share the public’s disgust for the things that are happening and for the waste crime that we’re seeing and we are taking action. Every year, we’re shutting down hundreds of illegal waste sites. But it’s a dynamic picture. For all the waste sites that we’re closing, we’re seeing more and more pop up around the country.”
A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) said: “We are working across government to wipe out illegal waste throughout the country and make those responsible pay.
“We are directly supporting the Environment Agency to stop the exploitation of our waste system, giving them more officers and 50% more funding to boost waste crime enforcement, and handing out tougher sentences for those who break the law.”
